summary of my introduction to gothic literature

#Summary of my introduction to gothic literature free#

The tale of Ligeia begins with the narrator asserting his deep love for the Lady Ligeia, even though he cannot remember how or where he met her - or even if she has a family. Even though the narrator marries the Lady Rowena, he can never put aside, or ignore, the power of his love for the Lady Ligeia, and it is possible that it is this all-abounding love which helps the Lady Ligeia to return to the narrator at the end of the story. of a bereaved lover.' This short story fits that prescription perfectly. of a beautiful woman' as told through 'the lips. In his theory of poetics, Poe expressed the belief that the most perfect subject for a poem (and, therefore, by extension, a short story) would be 'the death. The deep love which the narrator has for Ligeia is seemingly his sole reason for existing. Furthermore, the narrator is typical of many types of Romantic heroes in that he desires absolute knowledge we see a similar situation in the Romantic story of Goethe's Faust.įurthermore, the Romantic hero is completely dominated by his concept of love. The story takes place, then, at some distant time in some unknown place and concerns characters who have no discernible past. This characteristic, as noted, is often typical of the Romantic writer. We know nothing about his background we know him only through his mental states that we witness in the story.

#Summary of my introduction to gothic literature free#

unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of feeble will!' Whereas in 'The Fall' the Lady Madeline was able to break free of the iron that entombed her, the Lady Ligeia seemingly has the ability to retain her will to live through periods of time and to cross barriers of land and water ultimately, it would seem, it is possible for her - and the dead - to assume the body of another person.Īs is the case in almost all of Poe's short stories, the first-person narrator here is never named he has no family or friends. It is suspected, therefore, that Poe made up the quotation and merely assigned it to the writer.) The key words in this quotation, which the Lady Ligeia utters, express her strong belief that the weak may die but that the strong do 'not yield. (As a footnote, it is interesting that while Poe credited the quotation to Joseph Glanville, an author who actually did live and who was a favorite of Poe's, the exact quotation has as yet not been found among the author's works. For example, note the quotation which is placed at the beginning of the story it is used two more times in the story by the Lady Ligeia to express her belief that some type of life continues after the apparent death of the body. 'Ligeia,' published exactly one year before 'The Fall,' expresses this concept even more directly than does the story just discussed. Both women are presumed to be dead, but both of them possess a will to live that will not let either one of them remain dead. This story is akin to 'The Fall of the House of Usher' in that both the Lady Ligeia and the Lady Madeline possess an inordinate and superhuman strength to live. Yet, were the story not set in the ghostly castle, or even in the 'semi-gothic' abbey, the tale would still lend itself to the gothic genre merely by the presence of the supernatural element, an element which plays such a major role in the history of the Lady Ligeia herself.

This mood, as well as the suspense that Poe creates, is sustained.

The walls there are 'elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of semi-gothic' that the narrator has ever seen. Here, the castle as Poe's setting sits molding on the Rhine, conjuring up all types of gothic visions for us later, he replaces this moody setting with yet another gothic touch: a forlorn abbey located in some remote part of England. Likewise, there are strange noises, producing an eerie, 'phantasmagoric' effect on the inhabitants. As noted in the introduction, the setting is in an old castle in an unknown or remote part of the world in its dark interior, there are huge ottomans and tapestries and, outside, the wind is blowing the casement curtains, causing strange configurations. Like 'The Fall of the House of Usher,' this story also has all of the trappings of a classic, gothic horror tale.